journey. Father Irakli and Midshipman Glinka's mongoose stayed with the Chekhovs for some time. The Firgang house was crowded. Pavel now came home every evening. (He was soon to retire from Gavrilov's warehouse.) While he put up with the mongooses, which dug up potted plants and scrabbled in his beard, the palm cat was unbearable. It would emerge at night and bite the twitching feet of any guest sleeping in the dining room. (For Pavel, Anton's 'mongooses' were a bench mark of animal delinquency.) The male mongoose was christened Svoloch, best translated as 'Sod'. Sod and Suvorin were uppermost in Anton's mind. Sick with the change of climate (he had a cold, constipation, haemorrhoids and, he claimed, impotence), he stayed at home and wrote letters. He told Leikin that mongooses were better than dachshunds, 'a mixture of rat and crocodile, tiger and monkey'. To Shcheglov he wrote: If only you knew what lovely animals I brought from India! They are mongooses, the size of half-grown kittens, very cheerful lively
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beasts. Their qualities are: daring, curiosity and affection for man. They fight rattle snakes and always win, they are afraid of nothing and nobody and, as for curiosity, there isn't a parcel or package in the room they don't open; when they meet anyone they first of all poke around in pockets to see what's there? When they're left alone in the room they start to cry. He did not mention mongooses to Suvorin: instead he confessed his disillusionment with humanity - after Sakhalin his contempt for the Russian intelligentsia extended to Suvorin's closest collaborators: I passionately want to talk to you. My soul is seething. I want nobody but you, for you are the only one I can talk to… When shall I see you and Anna? How is Anna? Greetings to Boria and Nastia; to prove I have been a convict I shall, when I come to see you, attack them with a knife and yell wildly. I shall set fire to Anna's room… I embrace you and all your house warmly, except for… Burenin who… should long ago have been exiled to Sakhalin. For a month Anton was too ill to leave the house, let alone visit Petersburg. He spent Christmas and New Year with his family.
A
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The Flight to Europe January-May 1891 ANTON SPENT DECEMBER 1890 sorting out boxes of cards and papers from Sakhalin and revising his story 'Gusev'. Winter in Russia that year was harsh: Moscow plunged to minus 300, in Taganrog snow reached the eaves. Irregular heart beats and a cough kept Chekhov awake; by day haemorrhoids made sitting painful. The house was crowded - Vania had caught typhoid in the marshes of Sudogda and came to recuperate. Mentally, Anton had changed. His fiction was to show how Sakhalin had destroyed his respect for authority and strong men. His affection for Suvorin survived, but he now felt contempt for New Times. He rarely referred to Sakhalin in his fiction, but his confirmed distrust of ideology, and his preference for unspoilt nature over spoiled humanity are Sakhalin's legacy. Chekhov's remarks to Suvorin that December echo those he would give to his fictional heroes: 'God's world is good. One thing is not good: us.'
Lika Mizinova, Olga Kundasova - who brought her seventeen-year-old sister Zoe along - and the piano teacher Aleksandra Pokhlebina all danced attendance on Anton. In the Crimea Masha had met Countess Klara Mamuna: she became Misha's fiancee, but for a year she too focused on Anton. In Petersburg others were waiting. New rumours of impending marriage were spreading. While Anton was away, the old poet Pleshcheev had unexpectedly inherited two million roubles from a cousin who died intestate. His daughter Elena became an heiress. All Petersburg, from Anna Suvorina to AJeksandr Chekhov, urged Anton, half in jest, to propose.
To Burenin the journey to Sakhalin had been radical posturing by a failed talent. The radicals, however, acclaimed a politicized Chekhov. 'Gusev' won praise all round: the story's hero, a doomed tubercular soldier buried at sea, was seen by the left as a victim of a ruthless system and by the right as a model of Christian resignation. Tchaikovsky
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was moved. Natalia's dentist refused to accept payment from her, as Chekhov's sister-in-law. Two years late, the Dauphin sent a promised gift of Santurini wine, with a letter in fine Latin, ending: 'Dii te servent, nymphae ament, doctores que ne curent. Tuus A.27 The Gods were not obliging, and Anton would not let any doctor treat him, but the nymphs were loving. The Dauphin's wine helped Anton cope with his friends' misery.
Ezhov was still suicidal after his wife's death; he survived because he now wrote for Suvorin, and, vouched for by Masha, was teaching drawing to girls in a school run by a Madame Mangus [Mongoose].1* Ivanenko, his sister-in-law dead, his brother dying of OA, had lost hope and abandoned his flute, while Zinaida Lintvariova, ill with a brain tumour, Ivanenko reported, 'is sincerely and patiently waiting for her end. She keeps asking with great interest after you and your family, the poor woman cannot bear it.'29 The 'white plague' struck old friends in Taganrog. Death was gathering in Aunt Fenichka in Moscow and Anton's friend the actor Svobodin in Petersburg. After watching a soldier die on board the Petersburg, how could Anton not think of his own inevitable end? Nor had he forgotten Anna and Kolia: in March 1891 he put in his new notebook: 'The trouble is that both these deaths (A. and N.) are not an accident and not an event in human life, but an ordinary thing.'
On 7 January Anton went to Petersburg for three weeks, Shcheglov could see that he 'was ailing', but Anton wanted a 'feast in the time of plague'. On arrival he went with Svobodin to Shcheglov's name-day party, and panicked the gathering: he was announced as an emissary of the Chief of Police. Anton became drunk and arrogant. Shcheglov records words30 that foreshadow Chekhov's Dr Astrov (in Uncle Vania) who, drunk, 'does the most difficult operations and has his own philosophy'. He boasted that he would seduce his Petersburg admirer, the virtuous Lidia Avilova. He laid down the law to Shcheglov: 'The theatre should be like the church - the same for the peasant and the general… You ought to have an affair with a dark-skinned woman.' The next day Anton saw Tolstoy's comedy Fruits of Enlightenment. Stanislavsky directed it, and Vera Komissarzhevskaia made her debut. Anton had no idea who they were. Carousing with friends, Anton exhausted himself and his hosts. The Suvorins' telephone broke down under the strain of Anton's
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ANNl:i S 1)1 I'1-I.KKINAGE social whirl. Anton evaded Klcop;itra, but took up with another actress, Daria Musina-Pushkina, once of Masha's circle. Daria had come to Petersburg to escape her fiance and meet another suitor. She lived in the same building as the Suvorins, and was eager to have Anton as an escort. Daria besieged Anton with notes: Listen, cockroach, I couldn't resist the temptation and am coming to Svobodin's… I won't deny that I'd very much like you to come and fetch me, not me fetch you, but I know how stubborn you are… Darling Anton, if you came and saw me right now, how I should thank you, because I'm alone, terribly unhappy. Little cockroach, aren't you ashamed to ask if it's too late? Remember the saying: 'better late than never.'… But all the same you're better than I thought. Cicada. I expect you - you'd better come!31 In Petersburg there were women who disliked Anton: Zinaida Gip-pius, already a literary lioness, baited Chekhov: listening wide-eyed, she disingenuously asked: 'Does your mongoose eat people?'
For his Moscow womenfolk Anton found answers. He told Masha: 'I've been talking to Suvorin about you: you will not be working for him - I've decided. He is terribly fond of you, but in love with Kundasova.' Elena Shavrova rejected Anton's advice to change her pseudonym, and abandon her drama course. 'I'll make my breakthrough anywhere,' she asserted. The more she was opposed, the tougher the sixteen-year-old Elena got.32 She persuaded Anton to make Suvorin pay her 8 instead of 7 kopecks a line for the stories she was feeding New Times after Chekhov had revised them.
Lika Mizinova, however, wanted Anton, body and soul. She resumed the romance and set the tone for the coming nine years in her first letter to Anton in Petersburg: Today in the Council I wrote you a long letter and I'm glad I couldn't send it, I've just read it and am horrified - sheer weeping… I've been coughing blood (the very day after you left). Granny is angry with me for going out and not looking after myself, she prophesies consumption -1 can just imagine you laughing about that… When you get back don't forget to go to Vagankovo cemetery to say hello to my remains… In the morning I could write such a JANUARY-MAY l8oi gloomy letter, now I think it's all rubbish I shall enjoy upsetting you… write a letter without the usual little sarcasms… surely I deserve something other than irony?33 Anton's response was remorselessly teasing: As for your coughing… stop smoking and don't chatter in the street. If you die, Trofim will shoot himself and Spotty-face will get puerperal convulsions. I'll be the only one glad of your death. I hate you so much that just the memory of you is enough to make me utter sounds like your granny 'Eh… Eh… Eh'. I'd gladly scald you with boiling water… My lady writer, Misha's friend [Elena Shavrova], writes to tell me 'Things are bad -1 am seriously thinking of leaving for Australia.' You to the Aleutian islands, she
